Modern commercial, military and general aviation aircraft typically include complex electrical power systems that require extensive testing, both during manufacture and subsequent maintenance thereof. As a consequence, automated testing equipment is typically designed and developed along with the electrical power system of the aircraft that enables, e.g., power on testing of the system to be effected in a relatively fast, safe and reliable manner.
Such tests are typically conducted by equipping the automated test equipment with a test probe and then manually probing the individual terminal posts of several of the terminal strips of the aircraft's circuit breaker panels, i.e., the elongated rows of electrical terminals disposed in line with each other in the panels, to which the ends of the wires of the electrical system are coupled together with, e.g., spade lugs or other types of wire connectors.
For example, in the Boeing 737 aircraft, the electrical power system includes two circuit breaker panels, respectively including four and five terminals strips, each of which may include from between two to as many as ten or more terminal posts. Thus, in previous power on testing methods, even though automated test equipment was available, a technician was still required to contact several terminal posts with a voltage probe individually, i.e., one terminal post at a time, and repeatedly, e.g., both with and without power present at the terminal, to ensure that the action performed between the two checks actually caused the change in the power state of the terminal. Accordingly, this method is relatively labor intensive, and because the technician is required to probe many terminal posts and repeatedly during the course of one test sequence, the possibility of errors is increased. Additionally, because the circuit breaker panels must be open to accomplish the voltage measurements, the previous method exposes the personnel conducting the testing to some hazards. These problems can be even more exacerbated in larger, more complex aircraft.